PHR in the News

Asylum Network volunteer Dr. Vosk discusses the role coincidence plays in keeping asylum seekers alive, his method of assessing trauma via an individual’s scars, and the difficulties people face when seeking refuge in the US, where “fearfulness and rejection of immigrants have become an accepted part of national policy.”

President Obama affirmed Tuesday that there's evidence Syrians have been attacked with chemical weapons — in particular, nerve gas. But that's not the same as proof positive. So PHR is setting up a network to get fact sheets about chemical weapons into the hands of Syrian physicians.

Sampsonia Way is launching a series of interviews with physicians that donate their time to The Asylum Network of Physicians for Human Rights. Today we present what the organization does and some of the experiences of one of PHR’s volunteers in providing evaluations for asylum seekers.

The most important step in conclusively determining whether chemical weapons have been used is for independent experts to get prompt, unfettered access to the site of the suspected attack, according to Physicians for Human Rights, the American organization that was one of the first to document Iraq’s use of poison gas against its Kurdish population in 1988.